I don't code. 

Well, check that...I can muck up the HTML and CSS on my own blog, and I did cut and paste some PHP once, but for all intents and purposes, I don't code.

More importantly, though, is that I don't pretend to know how to code.  I know what I'm capable of and what I am not.

So when I see the pitchdecks and biz dev presentations that techie entrepreneurs send me, or when I ask someone to tell me about their company, I have to smile.  I smile the same way my CTO Alex smiles and shakes his head when someone who has never built anything advocates buzzwords like cloud computing or Ruby on Rails for every project.

Creating a sales plan, a marketing pitch, or PR for brand awareness is like building a service, and tech people are going to be no more successful at it than a business person will be trying to manage a technology build themselves or hacking something together on their own.  Sure, you get the occasional lightning strike exception, like Craig building the original version of Craigslist, but for the most part, every espect of a business requires focus and expertise to do it right.

For some reason though, tech people never seem to admit that they need a businessperson.  I see businesspeople ask for tech all the time to build a great idea but where are the tech people clamoring for a businessperson to market and sell a great product?

Some people think a great product doesn't need to be sold or marketed.  Sure, some things take off in a small community at first, but haven't we learned our Slanket/Snuggie/Freedom Blanket lesson yet?  Same product, but one of those products is making money hand over fist because of savvy marketing.

Crossing the chasm into the mainstream--really hitting that tipping point on usage or revenues or what have you--will be a function of a well thought out and well executed sales and marketing plan.  It's something that a lot of startups don't take seriously enough--until they're scrambling for users before their money runs out.  If you're asking the intern or the entry level marketing associate to drive your business forward, it's too late.

If you're in NYC this Thursday night, you should definitely check out Mark LaRosa and Jeff Stewart's nextNY presentation on Jumpstarting Sales at a Startup.  They're two sales experts and have helped a number of startups.  If you've got something to sell or are already selling something, this is a must-attend!

Long eyelashes and a long thin smile...pointed nose just like the guy she's with. He's in a dusty Yankee cap. They are both too casually dressed to still be single. I can't see her hand but they must be married. My view is blocked by the baby carriage turned towards them, awning and plastic weatherproofing raised to expose the baby in pink. It belongs to the woman next to them.

They are making funny faces at the baby. I can only see an arm poking out the side--tiny fingers pointing. Mom was a tattoo on her hand and a ring under her bottom lip--just a stud. She has big star earrings. The couple is chatting between themselves now. She has pulled down the hood of her coat. She has a single blonde streak across her otherwise brunette hair. They're nuzzling and he's kissing the top of her head as she buries it in his chest.

She's back to the baby now...and back to him. She makes a comment and he responds with a kiss. I can't hear because Alphaville is playing Forever Young in my ears.

Mom is tired. She yawns. She has a small piece of rolling luggage with her next to the carriage. The baby has thrown something on the floor. She pushes the carriage back to find it, exposing yellow leather boots.

The woman in the couple next to them is tapping the Yankee cap with her arm outstretched behind her against the subway car window. Her nail polish is very dark--almost black but not quite. Her nails are short.

The baby has an Elmo. I yawn myself and my eyes tear up as they always do when I yawn. The couple exits at Pacific Street. Elmo is dancing now--in rhythm with mom's arm. I can see the baby in the reflection of the subway door window. I didn't realize that before. Mom leans back. She seems a bit pregnant actually, but it could be her coat. Oh. Definitely not her coat.

Google reads your e-mail, you know. 

And Tacoda was tracking you based on your cookies.

And the government can wiretap your phone if they think you're a bad guy.

Remember when Facebook told everyone what I bought?

I hate to break it to most of you...  but 99.999% of the people in the world really don't care about this stuff. 

I mean, sure if you ask them in a survey, they'll care--but realistically, we have bigger things to worry about.  When Facebook shot themselves in the face with Beacon, most of the students taking my college business class hadn't even heard about it.

Facebook recently updated its TOS to give it the rights to stuff you upload, even after you leave, and people started flipping out.  

Someone wrote on Twitter that they were concerned that Facebook could relicense photos of their kids.  Really?  And why on earth would Facebook do that?  Is there a big potential revenue stream there for them?  I have a feeling there isn't much of a market for photos of your kids if you're not Brangelina.

So... Where's that rank on your concern scale relative to... um... let's say...  how you're going to pay for that kid's college tuition when the cost of education in this country outpaces inflation by 2:1?  Hell, I'm worried about that, and I don't even have kids.

Let's view all this stuff under the microscope of, "What can actually hurt me?"

In terms of consumer privacy, where's the relative concern over the credit report industry?  Whether I get an auto loan or a mortgage is based on information I can't check on everyday without paying for it that I also have little to no control over.  Nor can I add anything positive about myself, like references.  *That's* concerning. 

Facebook photos?  Like most people with half a brain, I don't post photos that I really care about that much on Facebook.  Any photo of me on the web could turn up on the front page of the NYT and I wouldn't really be that concerned about it--they're not worse than anyone else's photos.  And also like most people, I don't plan on eliminating my Facebook profile.  Hell, we forget, but most of us in our late 20's still have Friendster profiles!  Friendster!

As time marches on, having a presence on the web is becoming more the norm--as is having a mildly embarrassing photo or two around.  It's not the end of the world.  It won't get you fired.  You've still got a lot better chance of getting fired for what you say on the phone to clients, or just flat out underperforming at your job than based on what you post on the web.

And as for what Facebook's going to do with all your stuff--probably nothing.  I highly doubt, if I delete my Facebook account, I'm suddenly going to see all my photos being sold on some stock photo site somewhere--or some remnant version of my account that I can't get rid of.  The fact of the matter is, companies don't really fare well when they do things that piss off a bunch of people--so don't expect much abhorrent behavior from Big Brother if for no other reason than it just don't make a lot of business sense.

Now, if you're an artist and content creation is the way your feed yourself, then perhaps you need to worry about this, but for most of us, I highly doubt our day to day lives will be impacted at all--save for the fact that we'll have to read all our favorite echo chamber tech bloggers debate about it until Apple makes a new product announcement or Arrington returns from walking the earth like Caine in Kung Fu.

Link: ESPN.com - MLB - McAdam: The Big Question.

I'm liking this Typepad quickpost thing.   So if you're the A's, who do you deal?  Hudson, Mulder, or Zito?   

Personally, I like Hudson and Mulder better, especially because of one stat I've been paying more close attention to...  ESPN now has pitches per plate appearence... the total amount of pitches thrown per each batter that comes up.  High strikeout pitchers tend to have high numbers in this area, and you get a couple of freaks like Ryan, Johnson and Clemens who are able to ring K's up for 15, 20, 25 years, but if I'm making bets on longevity of young pitchers, I'd bet on someone who doesn't waste a lot of tosses.  Zito's P/PA number is almost a half a pitcher higher than the other two, meaning that over the course of an average game, that could equate to nearly 15-20 pitches extra for the same amount of batters--if he lasts the same amount of batters.  Throw in some inexplicably mediocre recent years and Zito is a tougher bet to me.  Hudson is just a winner, year in and year out, and Mulder is better than Zito if I'm choosing between the lefties.  Its tough to let Hudson go... its tough to let any of them go, but Hudson has the second highest winning pct of out any active pitcher.  If I'm the Mets, I'd sign whoever they give up.  Let the Yankees and Red Sox throw money at Pedro "5 innings 1 run" Martinez.  The Mets need a young arm to hang their hat on and Aaron Heilmann is not the answer, and I don't have a lot of faith in Kris Benson or that other goofball who can't throw strikes.

Fred talked this morning about the kind of blogroll he'd like to see...

"The only blogs I read every day are my wife, daughter, and brother
Everything else is based on links I see on the web
I wish there was a last.fm for blogs"

That's cool, but he's really addressing a much more fundamental shift in the way we're consuming things on the web.  A blogroll is just the data exhaust of our reading habits--or should be anyway.  More and more, through Twitter, Facebook, Google reader recommendations, del.icio.us, etc. we're being driven to things on the web from other people.

At the same time, the web has a much clearer picture of who are trusted network is--Facebook friends, the people we follow on Twitter, people we link out to, etc. 

That leads me to believe that there's a much more efficient and relevant way to consume content than my feedreader, which I filled over time, needs manual curation, and literally contains everything the blogs I read care to post, regardless of quality. 

The fix for this should be simple, and here's what the app would do:

- Let me login to Twitter and Facebook.  Instead of filling my reader with feeds, I want to fill it with people.  Whatever links they tweet, share, etc. become the flow of urls to me.  Instead of the firehose of everything from your blog, or *gasp* everything from everywhere like Friendfeed, I want to see the things you want to spend the social capital to share.  When you share something, you're investing with your social capital and if you continuously share irrelevant or low quality stuff, you'll lose it and people will stop following you.  The filter of knowing that you'll be taking attention from your network improves quality by an order of magnitude.

- Analyze it.  Screen for uncommonly appearing words, del.icio.us tags, blog post tags, etc. and pay attention to what topics are trending not only for me, but within my network of what my friends are reading.

- Filter it.  I've been pretty impressed with the PostRank widget on my blog and its ability to callout the best posts I've written lately.  It's pretty obvious what they're doing--looking at tags, Diggs, comments, etc...  but that's the important metadata we should use to figure out if something's worth looking at. 

- Mobilize it.  Give me either various clients so I can subscribe anywhere (and sync it up) or just a single feed so I can subscribe from anything I'm already using.

- Expose it.  Like Fred asked for, I want widgets showing most popular links from my network, best sources, and even aggregated data on most interesting content overall--a TechMeme for every tag. 

- Monetize it.  Give me the choice for a free version with sponsored links (links that people paid to get into my feed) or a subscription version w/o sponsored links. 

This is the way I want to consume content. 

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

This is seriously the worst Hans Gruber impression ever, and the dialogue they wrote for him was even worse... but Jamie Gumm saves it.

"Trust me I'm the all time wrongest tree to bark up..."

Yesterday, my blog turned five.

I'm not really inclined to write much about that...  I've got too much work to do today.

And, I suppose that's somewhat fitting.  This is me working.  You want to look back on it?  Knock yourself out.  It's all here.  Me?  I'm looking forward.  I have stuff to do. 

I'm not going to write about how much my blog has given me or who I've met because of it.  If you're blogging with any kind of consistancy and effort, you know what I'm talking about.  If you're not blogging, then the rest of us are inclined to think that either a) you do not want feedback on your thoughts, b) you do not think your thinking needs practice or c) you do not think you have any thoughts worth sharing.  In any case, we're not inclined to chase you down to force you into it. 

It's 2009 and if you don't get it by now, the world is passing you by.

I will, however, leave you with three lessons that I hope, in my five years of blogging, that you've learned from me by now:

1) You do not know everything and neither do I, so open communication makes us all smarter.

2) There are a lot of people out there who are working hard on awesome things.  There are a lot of other people out there talking about other people who are working hard on awesome things, talking about awesome things in general, and tagging themselves on the 8,000 pictures they took of themselves during social media drinkups and tweetups.  These latter people are to be avoided.  Strive to seek out those are are actually changing the world--leave no stone unturned.

3) You can't please everyone... so the best you can do is be a lightning rod for those likeminded people that you do see eye to eye with, and poke bears and rattle cages around the rest of them. 

Ok, back to work...

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

Wither New York City's Silicon Alley? from Brian Lehrer Live on Vimeo.

My first experience with the web was on Prodigy, on a Hayes 2400 modem. Prodigy offered 2 hours of WWW access for something like an additional 8 bucks. We turned it down at first. Why on earth would anyone need the web if already had all that good Prodigy content?

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

nextNY is doing three awesome talks in February.

On Thursday, February 5th, Jason Schwartz is running an event for community managers.  Just what is community management?  Who should be doing it?  What are best practices?  Find out from the folks who do it for startups like Etsy,

Then, on Thursday, February 19th, Jeff Stewart and Mark LaRosa are going to help startups figure out their sales strategies, sales hiring, and incentive programs.

Got an idea for a web startup, but have no idea about the technical implementation?  Some CTO's and technically inclined founders from local startups are making themselves available on February 23rd for an event on technology for business people--helping you cut through the buzzwords and rumors to help you focus and get your idea built.

Here's the key:

All of these events are free.

All of them cost us nothing to provide.  The venues and the time of the participants were donated.

So what does this mean if you're a professional society?  If you're in the business of essentially charging for live content, business connections, and professional development?  How do you compete with a self organized group of professionals who are providing, for free, similar resources that you do using the resources they already have--each other?

We have a free job board and a blog, too.  A paid professional society of young entrepreneurs would really find it hard pressed to compete against free.

So how did it happen and what does it mean for the professional society model?  Sure, we're all tech geeks and it's going to be easier for us to self-organize, but when you can find people on Meetup, LinkedIn, and Twitter, how long before other industries catch up?

About three years ago, I wanted to meet more members of my professional community--that being the emerging members of the NYC technology and innovation scene.  I was working for Union Square Ventures, a local venture capital firm, which enabled me to meet a lot of smart entrepreneurs, developers, and industry folks in my peer group, but nothing really brought us together as a community.  At the time, in February of 2006, we had a growing Meetup, but was basically about showcasing companies.  There was NYSIA, but that was an industry group with an expensive fee that most entrepreneurs and startups couldn't afford.

I decided it would be cool to invite some of the peers I had met out for a drink.  I thought it would be cool if 20 people got together once a month at a bar.

As it turned out, 75 people showed up that first night.  Since I didn't have time to manage these people (not being in the business of community myself), I threw everyone on a Google Groups listserv.  For our website, rather than use a centrally managed platform that I would have the burden of populating, we used an open wiki.

Eventually, the growing group clamored for more than just social events.  They wanted their professional questions answered.  How do I raise money for my startup?  Do I need a patent? 

Out necessity, not having a budget and knowing my hungry entrepreneur audience, I tried to put events together for free.  It was surprisingly easy.  Law firms and real estate firms were more than willing to lend us conference rooms for space, since they wanted to get in front of our community, and experienced entrepreneurs and businesspeople were more than happy to share their knowledge. 

It's really an interesting group.  We have no legal entity.  There are no titles and there is no hierarchy.  A few of us have various passwords to the web stuff, but that's about it.  Our blog has an editorial policy and it aggregates the NYC tech related posts of the members--no central voice.  There is a pretty strict no self-marketing rule on the listserv to prevent spam and to encourage selfless participation.

What's key to the group now is that we've really turned a corner in terms of leadership.  The fact that we're doing three events this month, and that I came up with the idea and am the lead person behind exactly zero of them is an accomplishment--one that groups and organizations should really aim for.  If your platform can't inspire those participating in it to want to take a leadership role, what are the chances anyone's going to want to pay for it?

The most recent tracks I've been listening to on last.fm:

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us:

Links I've recently tagged on del.icio.us: